Moss: The Forgotten Relic Review | I Admired It More Than I Enjoyed It
Ok, don’t be mad…this just wasn’t my kind of game
REVIEWS
Woody Wood
7/30/20266 min read
This is going to be one of those reviews where my opinion of the game clashes with its community’s. That’s because Moss: The Forgotten Relic isn’t exactly a new release. It’s a desktop adaptation of a highly regarded VR classic.
I didn’t know this when I picked it up. I just thought the trailer’s brightly colored scenes and mouse protagonist looked promising.
But after spending roughly nine hours with it, I came away with mixed feelings. I can’t deny the incredible production value on display here. Moss is a fairy tale that’s an absolute treat to take in. It’s just that my experience was broken up by some frustration with the platforming and puzzle design.
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A Beautiful Storybook World
I can see why fans of the VR title would love this game. Even on a standard monitor, the art direction is exceptional.
The world feels like stepping into a fantasy. The adventure, which unfolds across two (technically three) books, takes you through staples like an enchanted forest, the halls of an abandoned castle, fiery caverns, and frozen mountain tops. Each environment looks gorgeous and is packed with little visual touches to sell the illusion.
I’m not an audio guy, but I was especially impressed with the sound. The woods are brought to life by chirping birds and streaming brooks in the distance. The Forge is filled with clanging metal, turning gears, and bellowing steam. The game makes great use of its orchestral track to set the mood for moments ranging from serene to action-packed.
The story is just as memorable. You play as Quill, a young mouse who discovers a magical shard of glass that connects her with you — the “Reader”. Together, you set out to stop an evil force that wants to use the glass to control and reshape the world of Moss.
It’s clever because it makes you an active participant in Quill’s journey. I enjoyed having to coordinate her moves with my actions to get through each level. The mechanic worked at getting me more involved without a VR headset.
The whole thing is narrated to you by a woman who doesn’t just tell you the tale, she also voices all of the characters the same way you might when reading your kid a bedtime story. Cut scenes in between chapters are delivered through a storybook, and you have to “flip” the pages to keep listening.
All these elements evoke emotions and memories from watching childhood hits like The Neverending Story or The Secret of NIMH. I think most of their fans would agree that Moss delivers a premier experience when it comes to immersion.
How Much Do You Like Puzzles?
But there’s also gameplay to consider, and unfortunately, it didn’t always resonate with me.
Moss is, first and foremost, a puzzle game. Almost every room asks you to manipulate the environment using both Quill and the Reader to unlock the way forward.
The puzzles are undeniably clever, and they usually involve mixing multiple skills together. For example, you might have to spin a cylinder as the Reader to create a path for Quill so she can reach a lever. Pulling the lever moves a wall to give her a clear shot at a switch that partially unblocks the exit.
Quill and the Reader unlock new tools and abilities as the story progresses that pave the way for new, more complicated puzzles. Some of the later ones get really interesting as the game incorporates more creative elements like portals, rotating platforms, swings, mortars and so on.
The problem as I see it is that you don’t get much guidance. You just walk into a room and piece everything together yourself. Eighty percent of the time, the puzzles are fair and satisfying to solve. But, that still leaves a twenty percent of them that aren’t.
Walking aimlessly around a room for 5 minutes to figure out what to do really broke that carefully curated sense of immersion for me. Failing mutli-stage puzzles made it all the more frustrating by forcing me to repeat steps over and over.
I generally enjoy solving puzzles in video games, but not at the expense of momentum. I’m sure there’s a whole community of players who thrive on this sort of brain-teasing challenge, but I mostly found it exhausting.
Platforming Made it Worse
The platforming didn’t help matters either.
It’s not that the controls were bad. Actually, acting with Quill and the Reader at the same time felt quite smooth on a controller.
I can’t say the same about the fixed camera angles, however. Those made it difficult to line up jumps.
Most of the time, it was only a minor annoyance. But there were enough situations where I was forced to restart entire puzzles after a narrow miss.
To the game’s credit, it’s generous with checkpoints so you don’t lose all your progress when you accidentally jump into a pit. Nevertheless, I did start losing patience after repeating mistakes that didn’t always feel entirely my fault.
Usually, combat makes things like this less noticeable by breaking things up, but it’s more of an afterthought in Moss.
There are only a small handful of enemy types, and once you understand their attack patterns, getting past waves of them is a breeze. Boss encounters are fun because they involve some interactive elements, but there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.
The resulting sense of stop and go from the constant puzzle solving really broke up the game’s flow.
Not My Type of Challenge
Is it possible that I’m just not that into puzzle games anymore? Maybe, but at the same time, I enjoyed Darwin’s Paradox and it didn’t even have any combat! Just like Moss, it’s a short, puzzle-focused sprint with great atmosphere. It only lasted six hours compared to Moss’ nine, and it was even $10 more expensive.
I don’t think it’s the difficulty that bothered me either. My favorite games from the past year include rage-inducing titles like Silksong, Blasphemous 2, and Lies of P. I’m reasonably well-conditioned at this point to replay through content 10 to 20 times without breaking a controller.
What I learned about myself while playing Moss is that these days, I much prefer perfecting combos than searching for the right ledge to climb. What I got was the complete opposite, and that definitely colored my opinion of Moss.
I think this kind of self-reflection is necessary if you’re thinking about picking this game up. It doesn’t have end game content, difficulty levels, or different endings that might push you to play multiple times. Your first playthrough is likely to be the extent of your time with it, so you need to be on board with the good and the bad.
Luckily, the digital version only costs around $20 USD across all platforms (PC, Switch, Xbox and PS5), so buying it and realizing it’s not for you isn’t the worst mistake you can make.
Verdict
I’ll admit that Moss is almost worth the price of admission just to experience the world and the story. The production on this game is so good for a budget title, it almost doesn’t matter whether or not you love every minute of playing it.
If you enjoy puzzle games that reward patience and experimentation, then go pick this game up immediately!
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy every minute of it. I love fantasy, good stories, and puzzles, but I need them to flow smoothly — and that’s not what Moss delivers. If I had to do it again, I would grab it on sale and put it in my backlog.
